Jacology: Missouri More Purple Than Red

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(KPLR) – It’s been a few days now since voters across the country went to the polls and Charles Jaco has had some time to digest what happened.

So what do we take away from the election, besides a profound sense of relief that the political commercials have stopped? One big lesson is that most Missouri voters really don't care for President Obama. Another is that Missouri isn't as deep red as some republicans would like to believe.

In the GOP's favo, the fact that Mitt Romney soundly thumped President Obama in Missouri. The fact that republicans enlarged their historically large super majority in both the Missouri state house and state senate. The fact that Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder was re-elected, despite stripper-gate and despite his propensity for saying really weird things; like how the United Nations is preparing to seize Missourians guns.

So you look at all that and you might think Missouri is like, say, Oklahoma or Mississippi. The kinds of states where there are just about no white democrats left and those that are elected are mainly voted in to local offices. In most of the bright red states of the south and west, democrats are mostly either African-American or Hispanic.

But then there's Missouri. Missouri statewide elected white democrats as U.S. Senator, Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State and Treasurer. There are reasons for each. McCaskill won the senate because Todd Akin was a train wreck. Nixon was re-elected governor because he mostly acts like a republican. Koster, the democratic attorney general, used to be a republican.

But unlike white rural people in other states, white rural folk in Missouri can still be convinced to vote for democrats in large enough numbers to elect them. Especially, when the overwhelming democratic votes from St. Louis and Kansas City are thrown in.